First of all, I am a confused christian, and I am creating this thread to see if I can clear out some fog in my head. So lets start.

Claim: The bible is false in the sense that it was not written with the guidance of "god"

Reasons for my claim :

  1. Originally there was a lot of contradiction in the bible because it was written by humans
  • These contradictions were refractor-ed by a humans, specifically some committee of who's name I can't recall
  • No claims, if it wasn't for all of these refractor, more and more people will be aware of such contradiction and hence people will start to question and possible see the problems with the bible. Which could cause a tremendous loss in the business of selling bibles and spiritual objects

[*] There are things in the bible, still, that regular people find disturbing, such as the topic of homosexual, or parsing men more important than women.

  • Really, if it was written by god's disciples, and were the words of god, then such discrimination shouldn't exist, because god is suppose to love everyone of every type.
  • It also says that unless you follow him specifically, you will live eternity in hell? WTF!!! My family members are hindu, they are one of the best people that I know. My friend is not a believer in jesus, but possibly of a creator in general. He is one of the nicest and caring person that I know. Should he goto hell? For what? For some minuscule sins? So the bible is saying, I could kill thousands of people, and ask for forgiveness with all my heart, and from there be the best person I can be, then I will goto heaven, but my friend who does nothing* wrong, tries to pleases people before him, will go to hell because he didn't believe in jesus in particular! Come on now, that does not sound like "god's words".

[*] There is no type of evidence that supports the bible and anything in the bible

  • Most events declared in the bible are "fairy tale" like, and nothing supports their claims.
  • Some events, were explained by science and thus was not a supernatural. It was an actual explainable event with some probability.

[*] In factual sense, the bible is no more true than the Quran( the religious text of Islam) . The reason why many people believe this book than others is because they were brought up by it. When they were little, they had no intelligence to rebuttal and question the content of the bible deductively. And thus the result is that they take it true for granted from day one. Honestly, imagine you were a christian brought up with parents who believes hinduism. You would most likely believe this hinduism, especially if you were never able to leave india( assuming thats where you were born) which in turn would cause you to never find christianity with a high probability, because of their strict culture.

So in desperate help, I ask you to prove me false. I ask you to rebuttal each and everyone of these statements. My mind is going crazy these last few nights. The more I think about it rationally, the less I believe.

regards, D.Chhetri

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a magic invisible friend who lives in the sky, & talks to you inside your head
others have different magic invisible friends who live in the sky and talk to them inside their heads
each magic invisible friend tells their corporeal friends that they are the only magic invisible friend who lives in the sky

Most can be treated with psycho drugs, counselling
you can be normal
good luck with the treatment
yours appears to be working, you have taken steps toward rational thought

commented: Nice +0
commented: :) +0

Sure, God talked out of a burning bush to the writers of the Bible. They had His guidance.

What you are saying I hear alot. Give me a contradiction and I will investigate. Can you please give me verses that you find disturbing? Fact: there is more proof that Jesus existed than Alexander the Great - yet people believe in Alexander more. IF you can find Rob Bell videos, please watch them!

what was the reason why you came to Christianity in the first place? How did you feel?

I'm here to help you 100% as I've had discussion like this before and I also have a friend who might be able to help you.

God is a freak who created us and who loves us so much that he makes us suffer. We have to show him how much we love him or we will go to hell. Oh, and he also died for our sins! Show me 1 proof that god exists!

commented: -1 +0

To most Christians, the bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it, they just scroll to the bottom and click "I agree"

commented: ha -_- +0
commented: Thats really funny! +0
commented: Nice. +0
commented: 1 +0

You're in good company struggling with these questions. Many before have struggled with them. You're not likely to get much new advice on this. It's been done to death as they say. I sincerely doubt you'll ever "solve" this. You'll decide to either continue as a Christian, contradictions and all, because you find enough positive in it to do so, you'll decide there's too much that you don't like about it and reject it, or you'll take a third path. You won't renounce/reject it, but you'll just sort of drift away and be less devout. I won't even attempt to argue one way or another on the best course.

As to the claim and reasons, I'll approach it from a critical thinking/argument parsing viewpoint.


The four "reasons" don't necessarily go directly towards the "claim" itself. Number 2 seems particularly irrelevant to the claim that God didn't guide the writing of the Bible. There's nothing particularly contradictory in God deciding that the rule for getting into Heaven is to believe in Him. Whether YOU think that's fair and just may make you decide not to follow Him, but you'll have to read the Bible and decide whether the Bible claims that's the real rule or not. Your claim is that the Bible is false, not that the Bible isn't fair.

Number 1 goes to whether the Bible as it stands today was actually the original one or whether it's been changed. Well, that's provably true. If it weren't true, we wouldn't have different sects pointing out the differences and using them to discredit each other. You'll just have to figure out which one's the REAL Bible. Good luck with that. You've just changed the task to deciding which sect, if any, to follow. One thing's for sure. They can't ALL be the real version. Are ANY of them? Who knows? Your task is now harder. Find a contradiction and you've only proved that that particular Bible is wrong. And need I point out that every time you translate something to a new language there's ALWAYS an interpretation problem?

Number 3 goes to possible non-Biblical explanations to Biblical claims. That opens the door to non-Biblical explanations, but doesn't close the door to Biblical ones. Your job is to find something in the Bible that could not have occurred as it is claimed in the Bible. But if you do that, then you're into the whole "The Bible was never meant to be taken literally" claim.

Number 4 goes to whether people believe in the Bible because they were brought up in it from a time BEFORE they had any critical thinking skills. That's a good sociological debate. It doesn't specifically address your claim.

So to sum up, I think the argument itself is a bit flawed. I can grant all four premises and they don't lead to the conclusion, so debating whether the premises are true can be interesting, but I don't think they're going to alleviate your angst. You're not going to be able to solve this. There will be no "Ah-Ha" moment. The best anyone can do is lean you in one direction or another.

commented: Wow very good VernonDozier :D +0

What you are saying I hear alot. Give me a contradiction and I will investigate. Can you please give me verses that you find disturbing?

Biblical contradictions link here

But that doesn't mean the Bible is a fairy tail. It was written by many people over several centuries, so there are very likely to be contrictions. Genesis was written some 5500 years ago from a collection of documents gathered into the book of Genesis by Moses. Link.
And I agree that some of the Bible (e.g. creation) is meant to be taken metaphorically. Yes, God created the universe and everything in it, but the Bible doesn't explain how it was done. We now know that the universe was created over many billions of years and life on Earth evolved. Do you really think people at that time could have comprehended the idea of evolution of huge time spans like billions of years? Those people thought the Earth was the center of the universe and that it was flat. God spoke to those people in terms that they could understand, even though it was much too simplistic.

Biblical contradictions link here

But that doesn't mean the Bible is a fairy tail. It was written by many people over several centuries, so there are very likely to be contrictions. Genesis was written some 5500 years ago from a collection of documents gathered into the book of Genesis by Moses. Link.
And I agree that some of the Bible (e.g. creation) is meant to be taken metaphorically. Yes, God created the universe and everything in it, but the Bible doesn't explain how it was done. We now know that the universe was created over many billions of years and life on Earth evolved. Do you really think people at that time could have comprehended the idea of evolution of huge time spans like billions of years? Those people thought the Earth was the center of the universe and that it was flat. God spoke to those people in terms that they could understand, even though it was much too simplistic.

A Dope smoking hippy up in the hills wrote the bible.

A Dope smoking hippy up in the hills wrote the bible.

Do you speak from experience :)

Do you speak from experience :)

Well let's just say I'm no writer if that's what your asking! ;)

I meant the "dope smoking hippie" part.

Fact: there is more proof that Jesus existed than Alexander the Great - yet people believe in Alexander more.

Actually there is no proof that jesus christ was a historical figure. The only stories we have about him were written 50 or more years after his death. Only one of 'magic' 4 writers of the gospels actually met him.

Some of the stories from the new testament do not match historical events. Very specifically, the whole slaughter of all new born male children by king Herod. Herod's life was pretty well documented; he was an all-around nasty person who eventually started a rebellion against the Roman Empire and died suddenly (of what some say was congestive heart failure, or something - the symptoms up to his death are pretty well documented also). No one liked him, everyone wrote about all the really nasty things he did but no one mentions him killing all the male children under the age of 2. That would have been really big news but is nowhere to be found in the historical record. In fact there is no (zero, none, nada) mention of jc in any historical document (other than the new testament).

Back to the actual thread - there is no need to find proof of a belief, in fact reason and faith are yin and yang - they may circle each other but it is not really necessary that one offer support or proof of the other. I would go so far as to say that the 2 realms are so different that no proof in one could possibly apply to the other.

Seriously though, you can argue about the bible being correct when the simple truth is all religious people do in arguments is repeat them selves.

It must be lonely being an atheist. Believing there is nothing after death makes life meaningless.

I don't know.. i see more sense in having no fear of death and not worrying about life after death, it makes more sense not to care then to be deluded. But hey, maybe when your heart stops you do go to fairy land where everything is better. Where you can hang out with lepricorns and werewolves

Member Avatar for iamthwee

Faith is a funny old thing.

Especially the things in the Bible. Especially the old Testament.

'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle then it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.'

Hmmm.

As with all things in life, the beauty of life is that we as human beings are self-aware. We don't have to take things as a given. We can challenge it.

A lot of the things we learn in life are taken from life experiences. Take for example, the Bible's so called view on homosexuality. At one point, totally believed this nonsense. And I would laugh at fags on T.V with my dad. Then unbeknown to me my closest friend told me about a gay experience he had. And I was thrown into shock.

I reacted really bad. Most probably because it was the fear of the unknown and I totally abandoned him even though he had been there for me all my life, through some of my darkest moments. It got me questioning how is choosing your sexuality is NOT a choice. It is laughable now I look at it. To this day he is still struggling, and I'm trying to stand up and support him, but it is so damn hard. I wonder if I didn't have a religious background I would probably have been able to accept him better.

So I don't follow the Bible in a robotic fashion. But there are elements of the Bible that do uplift and inspire me. And I do believe there is an afterlife. This is where my faith is.

commented: C'mon man -- then/than -- will you ever get it right? +0

Disclaimer: I'm an atheist and always have been but I enjoy debate so I'll throw in my 2 cents.

1. Yes this is true, I think it was around the time of Emperor Constantine of Rome who declare Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. (Ah the Romans the best bureaucrats of the ancient world), However I think the reason was more to homogenize the religion through the Empire (to stop people fighting over which gospels to believe and which not to etc..) rather than to sell bibles. We can see how well that worked. It was done by educated individuals so likely they would have considered other aspects rather than just greed such as which sources were more reputable, which were best written, etc... However, it was long after Christ was dead so it is difficult to know how reliable they're judgement was.

2. This is not an argument against the truthfulness/historical accuracy/word of god-ness of the Bible. Just the personality of God. However, the difference between the God of the new testament and the God of the old testament suggest He took anger management classes in between.

3. Whether they are "fairy tale" or not depends on whether you think the Bible is a trustworthy historical source. However, it is true that the other historians of the time do not mention most of the events of the Bible but that could just be that all those who did discuss it were either included in the Bible or destroyed. Yes some of the events have been explained by science. Some of the events do have other sources supporting them (eg. Jesus is also mentioned in the Quran, however he is considered just another human prophet)

4. Actually since Islam is a newer religion and the Quran has been less translated/re-translated than the Bible it could be considered more reliable. But it was also written long after the events.

Your also missing the fact that all of the Gospels were written long after Jesus (if he did exist) was dead and many of the so called sacred objects date to the middle ages.

Edited to Add:

I'm pretty sure science has proven the Great Flood (Noah's Ark) couldn't have happened because there isn't enough water on the planet to have been as deep as said in the Bible. Which would at least prove there has been exaggeration in the Bible.

Member Avatar for iret

Just a quick thought on this topic...

If you're a confused Christian, then perhaps you're not a Christian (which is not a bad thing). In other words, it's almost like a left handed person is being forced to be a right handed person.

Just a quick thought on this topic...

If you're a confused Christian, then perhaps you're not a Christian (which is not a bad thing). In other words, it's almost like a left handed person is being forced to be a right handed person.

Perhaps I'm not or perhaps I am, but thats what I'm trying to find out, who I am and what I believe in. Been doing a lot of research lately, and its becoming more clearer to me, but still hazy. But in time...

Thanks everyone for your responses and criticism.

regards, D.Chhetri

commented: your welcome :D +0

Just a quick thought on this topic...

If you're a confused Christian, then perhaps you're not a Christian (which is not a bad thing). In other words, it's almost like a left handed person is being forced to be a right handed person.

Umm... there is substantial data to support that handedness is at least partly genetic, and where as religiosity (or lack there of) may also have a genetic contribution the particular faith of an individual is due to their upbringing.

Sorry, it just bothers me when people say they are born Christian or that their baby is Christian, which is not true any baby can grow up Muslim as easily as they can grow up Christian depending on what their parents/community exposes them to.

I think i prefer atheism on the basis that spending eternity in hell sounds pretty bad but spending eternity in a place with all the "good" people sound like the christmas day with the family ad infinitum.:scared:

Funny what you sya about teh contradictions. Yu don't just read the verses, you look around it for teh context - He even admits that is a factor when your read the editors notes; have youa ctually read this?. I will read teh moses one another time, infact its best you remind me though.

Biblical contradictions link here

But that doesn't mean the Bible is a fairy tail. It was written by many people over several centuries, so there are very likely to be contrictions. Genesis was written some 5500 years ago from a collection of documents gathered into the book of Genesis by Moses. Link.
And I agree that some of the Bible (e.g. creation) is meant to be taken metaphorically. Yes, God created the universe and everything in it, but the Bible doesn't explain how it was done. We now know that the universe was created over many billions of years and life on Earth evolved. Do you really think people at that time could have comprehended the idea of evolution of huge time spans like billions of years? Those people thought the Earth was the center of the universe and that it was flat. God spoke to those people in terms that they could understand, even though it was much too simplistic.

commented: Needs more 'teh'. +0

Are yous sure the emperor did so to 'keep peace'? You think God was angry? He was doing it in love of the Jews; they were his chosen people, and yes, they did make mistakes and God brought justice - It was out of love and to teach them a lesson.

Then how do you explain the miracles? If you think that the Bible is bad, then the Quran is worse - The point in which the Bible and Quran differentiate are when Allah says that anyone who isn't muslim should die; it doesn't say so in teh Bible. Muslims believe was only a prophet that Allah sent (as part of many) as when humans killed Jesus, Allah sent a last prophet (Mohammed) to save the people. That's how the Quaran is different and that's why its newer. Infact, as far as I know, Mohammed never did any miracles.

I wouldn't say long after he was dead.

It is also thought that archeologist have found remains of the Ark too. Also, remnants can leave the earths atmosphere too and some could be involved to make more lava - who knows, they're theories.

Disclaimer: I'm an atheist and always have been but I enjoy debate so I'll throw in my 2 cents.

1. Yes this is true, I think it was around the time of Emperor Constantine of Rome who declare Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. (Ah the Romans the best bureaucrats of the ancient world), However I think the reason was more to homogenize the religion through the Empire (to stop people fighting over which gospels to believe and which not to etc..) rather than to sell bibles. We can see how well that worked. It was done by educated individuals so likely they would have considered other aspects rather than just greed such as which sources were more reputable, which were best written, etc... However, it was long after Christ was dead so it is difficult to know how reliable they're judgement was.

2. This is not an argument against the truthfulness/historical accuracy/word of god-ness of the Bible. Just the personality of God. However, the difference between the God of the new testament and the God of the old testament suggest He took anger management classes in between.

3. Whether they are "fairy tale" or not depends on whether you think the Bible is a trustworthy historical source. However, it is true that the other historians of the time do not mention most of the events of the Bible but that could just be that all those who did discuss it were either included in the Bible or destroyed. Yes some of the events have been explained by science. Some of the events do have other sources supporting them (eg. Jesus is also mentioned in the Quran, however he is considered just another human prophet)

4. Actually since Islam is a newer religion and the Quran has been less translated/re-translated than the Bible it could be considered more reliable. But it was also written long after the events.

Your also missing the fact that all of the Gospels were written long after Jesus (if he did exist) was dead and many of the so called sacred objects date to the middle ages.

Edited to Add:

I'm pretty sure science has proven the Great Flood (Noah's Ark) couldn't have happened because there isn't enough water on the planet to have been as deep as said in the Bible. Which would at least prove there has been exaggeration in the Bible.

@ Portgas - your images do not make sense.

Genetic you say? Hmm, please I want more prrof (even for the lefthandededss

Umm... there is substantial data to support that handedness is at least partly genetic, and where as religiosity (or lack there of) may also have a genetic contribution the particular faith of an individual is due to their upbringing.

Sorry, it just bothers me when people say they are born Christian or that their baby is Christian, which is not true any baby can grow up Muslim as easily as they can grow up Christian depending on what their parents/community exposes them to.

yes we've had that link submited and I have replyed to it

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